Home sweet gnome

The Skeptic, 7.2

If I were a garden gnome, I am not sure I would like to be
referred to as `an item of garden furniture'. But this is, it
appears, the correct police terminology. Detective Inspector Gordon
Mutch of Didsbury CID, Manchester, recently appealed to the local
community to keep a keen eye on their `garden furniture' in the
wake of a startling increase in gnome-napping. As a local newspaper
put it: `Gnomes roam from homes'. Apparently, someone, or something,
is prowling around the streets of Manchester stealing garden gnomes.
Trying to fathom the motive for such activity is hard, but certainly
no harder than worrying about why people have them in their gardens
in the first place.

Gnomes, elves, fairies, goblins - collectively `The little
people' - have an important place in European folklore. Not so
long ago, it was common in some districts for people to leave
saucers of milk outside their doors for the fairy people. Consider
the vast number of people who wished to believe in the ridiculous
Cottingley Fairies hoax. But if there is a direct link from the
suburban garden gnome to the folklore of the little people, then
we have an interesting reversal here; traditionally, it is the
little people that do the kidnapping.

Folktales tell of the little people and fairies abducting a
human child, leaving a fairy child in its place. And adults too:
Robert Cook, a 17th century Scottish clergyman and author of The
Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies was commonly
believed not to have died a natural death, but to have been abducted
by the little people and held under a fairy hill. There are stories
of the little people abducting human midwives, to assist at the
birth of fairy-human hybrids. If a human entered a fairy hill,
or an underground lair, their sense of time would be distorted.
These are, of course, exactly the same ideas as we see in the
reports of modern UFO abductions. I don't believe in either as
physical reality, but I do believe in both as genuine folk beliefs
worth investigation.

To discover the basis for these motifs is hard. We might ask
whether there were at some point in our history real `little people',
perhaps a result of tribal in-breeding. There is some historical
evidence for believing that such groups did exist. One example
is the `trows', the fairy people from the Shetland Islands, who
are said to have been forced by a preacher to flee to the Faroes.
Indeed, one of the islands off the Shetlands is called The Little
Isle of Pygmies. Perhaps we are seeing in the abduction of the
garden gnomes a kind of `folk revenge' for the long history of
fairy abductions!

More likely is that the phenomenon has a lot in common with
crop-circle hoaxing. As Robin Allen makes clear elsewhere in this
issue, it is now widely accepted that the vast majority of crop
circles are the work of intelligences which are firmly terrestrial
in nature. Still, the question of who is responsible, and what
their personal motives are, remains largely unanswered. I favour
two parallel explanations: serious conceptual artists, who discuss
the matter gravely over their cappuccinos, and others who simply
do it for fun after a few beers. I would guess that the latter
far outweigh the former (physically, as well as numerically).

My guess is that it is the Booze `n' Roller brigade who are
terrorising gnomeowners. Rather like an extended April Fool's
joke, the gnomes disappear, and in subsequent weeks the owners
receive postcards from the little people, postmarked from all
over the world. Sometimes, the gnome comes home, usually altered
in some way, such as the aquisition of a sun tan achieved with
a liberal application of boot polish, or holding a little suitcase.
The logistics involved are obviously not straightforward. Who
has the freedom to carry a gnome around the world, visiting exotic
spots and sending postcards back? One serious suggestion is oil-rig
workers, who freelance around the world's rigs and have time on
their hands. Maybe. Some people do have strange hobbies. I certainly
do.

My favourite gnome abduction story is told by folklorist Jan
Harold Brunvand in his most recent collection of urban folklore
Curses! Broiled again! (Norton, 1990). In Australia, garden
gnomes started disappearing from one particular neighbourhood
on a large scale. They were found in a clearing in the bush months
later, where they were all gathered around the largest gnome,
having a meeting. A committee meeting of the Gnome Office, no
doubt. (Sorry.)